ABSTRACT
Some work has been done towards bringing consumers into the system, at both the individual and the community level. Australia's National Health Strategy recommends that areas and services should establish consumer advisory bodies to represent populations within the community, and that states and regions should resource self-help and community groups. By contrast, health consumers, especially if disabled, chronically ill or ageing, live with the reality that their bodies are not perfect in a stereotypical sense and that no amount of medical intervention will make them so. The new paradigm, from a health-care consumer perspective, will therefore emphasise the 'whole' health status of specific population groups and see this as an ethical issue not only for health care but for health research funding. Analysis of the impact of the health-care system on the health of the consumer shows that many changes would be achieved if the fundamental assumptions of the dominant paradigm were different.
